Jonathan Shaheen

This paper argues that the semantic facts about ‘because’ are best explained via a metaphorical treatment of metaphysical explanation that treats causal explanation as explanation par excellence. Along the way, it defends a commitment to a unified causal sense of ‘because’ and offers a proprietary explanation of grounding skepticism. With the causal metaphor account of metaphysical explanation on the table, an extended discussion of the relationship between conceptual structure and metaphysics ends with a suggestion that the semantic facts about ‘because’ tell against grounding-causation unity.

This paper presents evidence that ‘because’ is importantly ambiguous between two closely related senses covering what are usually called causal explanations, on the one hand, and grounding or metaphysical explanations, on the other hand. To this end, it introduces the lexical categories of monosemy, polysemy and homonymy; describes a test for polysemy; and discusses the results of the test when applied to ‘because’. It also shows how to understand so-called hybrid explanations in light of the semantic facts established by the analysis.

This paper pursues a question about the spatial relations between the three types of matter posited in Margaret Cavendish’s metaphysics. It examines the doctrine of complete blending and a distinctive argument against atomism, looking for grounds on which Cavendish can reject the existence of spatial regions composed of only one or two types of matter. It establishes, through that examination, that Cavendish operates with a causal conception of parts of nature and a dynamic notion of division. While the possibility of unmixed spatial regions is found to be consistent with both the doctrine of complete blending and Cavendish’s anti-atomism by themselves, it is finally ruled out by a consideration of her theory of place. In fact, the geometrical question of the spatial relations between types of matter that drives the paper is ultimately exposed as illicitly mathematical from the perspective of Cavendish’s metaphysics.

My dissertation investigates the semantic contribution of the individual words ‘why’ and ‘because', attempting to get clear on whether and how some of our central explanatory terminology gets disambiguated, and thereby to make some progress on a theory of ‘why’-questions that can tell us something substantive about explanation. I argue that ‘why’ and ‘because’ have literal causal senses, as well as distinct senses that we use to communicate metaphysical explanations. I show that apparent further semantic variations in the meaning of ‘because’ in its so-called epistemic and metalinguistic uses are illusory, and give a full explanation of those variations in terms of syntactic ambiguities. Finally, I argue that a causal metaphor unifies the senses of 'why' and 'because' at issue in metaphysical explanations with their literal causal senses. What this semantic investigation turns out to offer us, I argue, is a new understanding of the centrality of causal explanation to explanation in general.

This paper characterizes two senses in which Hegel interpretations can be (anti-)metaphysical. It argues that Pippin's seminal work misreads Hegel’s Being Logic through reading it anti-metaphysically, in one of these senses. But it also suggests that Pippin’s recent work makes room for a metaphysical (in the corresponding sense) reinterpretation of the Being Logic. So it pushes, in the spirit of a friendly amendment, for a fuller such reinterpretation, one that nevertheless coheres with Pippin’s deep commitments about Hegel as a post-Kantian philosopher, since the reading remains, in the relevant sense—now the other one—anti-metaphysical.